Zusammenfassung: We compared the von Bertalanffy growth function (VBGF) and five polynormial functions (PF) in modelling fish growth for 16 populations comprising six species of freshwater fishes. Ranked results of the variance explained by each growth function indicated that VBGF described growth data better than three- and four-parameter polynomial functions. Log-transforming length and age greatly improved the goodness-of-fit of the three-parameter polynomial function. Statistical comparison of growth between populations or sexes was done using a general linear model for polynomial functions. The VBGF proved to be the best growth model for all 16 populations.

Zusammenfassung: Length-based population analyses have had a fairly long but not too successful history. These methods are required over a range of situations from when aging is impossible to when it is difficult or prohibitively expensive. There have been 3 sorts of approaches: 1) modal analysis to convert length frequencies to ages 2) age-length key enhancement and 3) imbedded growth models. The last group is what is generally known as length-based methods and the focus of this review. At the 1991 ICES Methods Working Group, 5 techniques were compared and these results are summarized. Two of these techniques, cohort slicing and length-based ADAPT, are applied to swordfish (Xiphias gladius ) data. The imbedded growth model for the former technique is the mean size at age while the latter uses the distribution of size at age. A new method is also presented which begins with cohort slicing then estimates numbers at age and enhances an inferred age-length key at each step of an iterative process.